08/26/09 – Cindy Sheehan – The Scott Horton Show

For Antiwar.com, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
First we're going to go ahead and get to our first guest.
Hanging on the line is Cindy Sheehan.
Non-partisan peacenik.
She writes the blog CindySheehanSoapbox.com.
Welcome to the show, Cindy.
How are you doing?
I'm doing fine, Scott.
How are you?
Thanks for having me on.
I'm doing great, and thank you so much for joining us.
It's been, well, gee, three or four years since we've spoken, I guess.
It's been a while.
I didn't know you were ever trying to get a hold of me.
I heard your show yesterday, and you were like, yeah, she's a flake or whatever, but I didn't know you were trying to get a hold of me because, of course, I would have made time to be on your show.
Well, that was back then.
Gee, so you heard that, huh?
Sorry about that.
Yeah, I did, Scott, you know.
I have listening capabilities also.
Oh, geez.
Well, I didn't think anybody was paying attention.
Well, anyway.
Well, Scott, you know how much I like you, and I remember you coming to Camp Casey and meeting me there and support your guys' work on Antiwar.com for sure, and so it's nice to be on your show.
Yeah, well, I hope you heard me say nice stuff yesterday too, right?
You did.
I heard you say lots of nice stuff.
All right.
Well, so, and I'm very proud of you.
I have to say the mainstream media is doing their best, I guess except the very few local papers there, to ignore you, but you have brought your Camp Casey protest to Barack Obama's vacation.
Now, why is it that you figure you need to do that?
He's not George Bush after all, Cindy.
Right.
Right.
Well, we feel like we need to do it because we were right to protest the wars under George Bush when we first started doing it.
It wasn't popular, right?
You know, it was very unpopular to protest the wars.
As a matter of fact, it was treasonous and un-American and all kinds of stuff to be against George Bush's wars.
But we were right.
We were right to do it then, and the wars are still wrong under Obama, and we're still right to be protesting.
And what really is amazing to me is that, well, it's not so amazing as predictable, that now that we have a Democratic president, the so-called anti-war movement is basically standing down for whatever reason, hope for change or whatever.
I refuse to do that spot because, you know, it doesn't matter.
You said I'm a nonpartisan peacemaker.
You know, the killing, the violence, the torture, the crimes, the police state crimes here in America still continue no matter who's president.
And if we want to have, you know, any true policy change, we have to keep our integrity of vision and we have to keep our integrity of purpose or we're never going to get anything done.
It's so frustrating, isn't it?
Because it's, you know, if you remember back, I'm sure you do, the problem with George Bush was all the terrible things that he did.
And now it would seem as though the problem that the peace movement had with him is they just didn't like him.
That was the accusation, right?
That's what they used to say to us.
You just don't like Bush.
And now it looks like the people leveling that accusation were actually right.
Here's the same policies continuing in silence.
Right.
It wasn't an anti-war movement.
It was an anti-Bush movement.
And for eight years this movement loved to hate George Bush.
So obviously it wasn't the policies.
Obviously it wasn't the wars.
Obviously it wasn't the devastation that he was causing.
It was just George Bush.
Because obviously these things are not stopping under Obama.
As a matter of fact, they're getting worse.
In every theater things are getting worse.
We're expanding, you know, wars for empire.
They don't call it the global war on terror anymore.
They call it the overseas contingency operation.
So that's being expanded.
And it's just really, it doesn't show very much integrity to not be, not have thousands of people here on Martha's Vineyard standing with me opposing the wars that we opposed or, you know, theoretically opposed under Bush.
Well, now, do you still have your hardcore, the ladies from Code Pink and that kind of thing, they're still with you, right?
Unfortunately Code Pink has not made a presence here.
And unfortunately I have emailed my good friends at Code Pink and I haven't gotten a response from them to even endorse this action.
And Code Pink, you know, I don't know if you've probably heard, but a lot of people didn't hear because there was another media blackout against my campaign, against Nancy Pelosi for Congress in San Francisco.
And Code Pink refused to endorse me, but they endorsed Obama.
So, you know, what I think we have in the institutional peace movement or the establishment peace movement, so this is radio so you can't see me doing my air quotes, the so-called peace movement is that it many times has been co-opted by the Democratic Party for access.
You know, they think that going around, marching around the halls of Congress, wearing the clothes of your shoes down is somehow going to affect any kind of change.
And, you know, that's not realistic and, you know, that's living in a fantasy world.
Wow, yeah, that's really disappointing to hear.
I mean, Code Pink, those were the ladies with the sign Pelosi knew in 2002 about the torture.
And, you know, with the bloody hands screaming at Condoleezza Rice, these are the hardcore.
Right, well, apparently they're only hardcore when Republicans are in power.
Well, so tell us about SS Camp Casey and what is it that you're doing with this?
You have actions planned for all week long this week, right?
And we do have some hardcore peace activists here representing, I don't know if they're representing themselves, but there's people from IVAW, Gold Star Families for Peace, World Camp White, the Green Party.
You know, so we do have some organizational support on local levels, which is really heartening to see.
Well, the SS Camp Casey is we're going to, you know, Ted Kennedy passed away today, so that's kind of thrown a monkey wrench into our plans.
And, you know, I'm not saying that in a selfish way because, you know, I did extend my condolences to the family and the people of Massachusetts for the loss of Ted Kennedy.
But it threw a little bit of a monkey wrench into our plans.
So tomorrow we're going to set sail.
We have 100 foot flukes that we're going out in the bay to have some real, you know, dedicated working group to hammer out what we're calling the International Declaration, I'm sorry, the International People's Declaration of Peace.
And that's to build a worldwide grassroots movement to oppose wars, to oppose our government, to work together to resist being used by our government in this, you know, global military corporate empire that's being spread around.
So we're very excited about that.
We're having a lot of excitement about that.
Once we get a rough draft and get it out to the grassroots leaders of peace movements around the world, we're going to take it out around the world to get signatures and to really build a movement where we don't have to go to where the presidents camp out anymore because we know that they'll do their best to ignore us or they'll do their best to demonize us, as has happened to me, and we won't be effective.
So what we need to do is join together to build a real grassroots movement of resistance, not, you know, trying to get the ruling class elite to change their minds, but for us to have a paradigm shift on a grassroots level.
Well, I really like that.
Just cut the state out of it entirely and just get the people around the world signing on to this thing.
I'm all for that.
We've got, what, 6.3 billion people.
That could be a lot of paperwork when we deliver that petition finally, huh?
Well, it's not a petition.
It's a declaration because we're going to go beg what I call the robber class for anything.
We're going to declare it in our own grassroots people's movement, as you said.
There's no petition about it.
It's just signing on a statement of core principles as human beings, and it declares the intrinsic value of each human being on this planet, not just, you know, white, rich Americans.
So every human being on this planet has an intrinsic right to life, and that's what we are calling our basic core value is.
And if we can do this person-to-person, across borders, hand-to-hand, then I think that that will build a movement of true change.
Well, you know what?
I don't know how difficult this would be, and maybe it would be very difficult, Cindy, but it seems like, especially now that the liberal peace groups, so-called, have all kind of fallen away and the party in power has switched, that maybe what would be really powerful right now would be if you could find some kind of prominent conservative anti-war person to join in an alliance with and kind of preach more of a, for lack of a better term, a right-wing anti-war view and try to make the movement a little bit broader.
Well, in my whole new ideology, philosophy that I'm going forward with, it's more of a class division, and we are supposed to be having some Ron Paul people come to the island this weekend to join us in our anti-war, anti-imperialist message.
We might not agree on everything, but we sure agree on that.
And so I think these core principles that we're putting together with this Declaration of Peace will be something that everybody can sign on to.
You know, we're not going to talk about where we differ on health care or economics or anything like that.
It's just going to be solely about protecting human beings and human life.
And our children and our grandchildren.
So I'm sure that this will be something that everybody will agree to.
Well, and you know, when you say your basic premise for these core principles is simply the self-evident truth that everybody owns themselves and has a natural right to their own life, that ought to appeal to all liberals and all conservatives in this society.
That's what everybody claims their basic premise is most of the time anyway, except, I guess, Bill Kristol and them.
Yeah, well, you know, and we have to reclaim those rights.
We can't be used, and one of the tenets of this principle is not to be used as pawns in the state.
You know, to kill other people's children or to be killed.
Well, do you think that maybe the liberals who are not so concerned about the war anymore, do you think maybe they just don't even really know?
I mean, the media's been really quiet.
They don't say, you know, they don't cover the Iraq war on a daily basis at all.
Maybe even they don't on a weekly basis, and they don't really emphasize that Obama's actually escalating the war in Afghanistan and into Pakistan.
I mean, it's not like they deny it, but they don't really talk about that very much.
All the focus is on health care, etc.
Well, I think for some of the people, Democrats, that's true.
Many Democrats and the Democratic base is anti-war, and, you know, I've been welcomed here on Martha's Vineyard just as, you know, not as profoundly or intensely as Obama has, but everywhere I go, people love me.
And, you know, there's some kind of disconnect there, isn't there, Scott?
Because Barack Obama and Cindy Sheehan don't stand for the same things at all.
But there's a disconnect in the Democratic base, thinking that he's some kind of a peace person.
I will say that about the Democratic base, but, you know, the leaders of the establishment anti-war movement, I don't think they have that excuse, because they know.
Right.
Yeah, we all got antiwar.com, right?
Yep.
Well, so tell me this.
Have you had any success at ruining the current emperor's vacation out there?
Well, I just got here last night, and it's funny.
We had dinner reservations at someplace that he happens to, right next door to where he happened to be.
So it was, you know, like a checkpoint third world country getting to our dinner reservation.
And I was like, you know, how dare Barack Obama ruin my vacation.
I'm just kidding.
But, you know, we haven't had the opportunity yet.
We were going to start our protest today, but the unfortunate passing of Senator Kennedy.
So we don't even know how much longer the president is going to be on the island, but he knows we're here.
You know, everybody knows we're here.
And like I said, I don't think being here is going to affect his way of thinking or his policies at all.
But what we need to do is reach out to people who protested under Obama, I mean under Bush, and to get them back on board with the anti-war movement.
We're having an anti-Afghanistan protest on October 5th in front of the White House, on Monday, October 5th, in Washington, D.C., so we're hoping to build some momentum for that.
We're hoping to build some momentum for people to challenge the system, no matter who's president.
And that's just basically what it's all about.
It's about the system.
Well, you know, I got an e-mail this morning from Jim Ostrowski.
He's a LewRockwell.com libertarian, and he hosts the blog Political Class Dismissed.
And he wants to have a big kind of libertarian-based anti-war rally, I think, on September 5th.
As I said, we're going to be talking about, or maybe I didn't say, I'm about to say, we're going to be talking with him about it on the show tomorrow.
And I think that's, you know, the anti-war movement, such as it is always, was so small, Cindy, and we've got to try to look for allies wherever we can.
And, you know, if it comes to the best we can do is try to build an anti-war right, as hopeless as that sounds, you know, focus on the financial cost, focus on, well, the fact that it's conservatives, kids who are being killed for the most part because they're the ones who give their kids up for military service the most, and that kind of thing, you know, we've got to try.
I don't know.
Well, we had a chance in 2005, though, when we had hundreds of thousands of people on board with us.
But what happened was the movement was co-opted by groups like MoveOn or United for Peace and Justice, and they're made to elect Democrats.
So when Democrats took over power back in 2007, it killed the movement.
And in 2008, well, it didn't kill the movement.
It might have put it on my support.
But in 2008, when Barack Obama was elected, it killed the movement.
So we're here trying to revive any kind of feeling on Martha's Vineyard.
And you know what, Scott?
It's a lot nicer than Crawford.
Yeah, I bet it is.
That's funny.
Well, it probably won't be too long before they're smearing you as an anti-government extremist, a right-winger isolationist.
No.
You know, that's not possible.
I am anti-our government.
I'm anti-most governments and what governments do.
I'll be proud to say that because most governments do not have our best interests at heart.
But, you know, I'm pro-peace and I'm pro-life and I'm pro-human beings being treated in a dignified way no matter where they live.
That's what I am.
Well, I think that is pretty right-wing when Democrats are in power, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
No, it's just a moral statement.
It's just a small statement that I think anybody should be able to sign on to.
But I've got to get going now, Scott.
Right.
I was just going to say thanks very much for your time on the show today, Cindy.
I really appreciate it.
Well, thanks for talking to me.
And we'll talk soon.
I'm very easy to get a hold of.
Okay, good deal.
And good luck this week.
Thank you.
All right, y'all.
That was Cindy Sheehan.
We'll be right back.